Page 33 of Kings
“No,” he snapped, wiping the blood off his mouth with the back of his sleeve, still glowering at Axel. “Of course not.”
“Then who the fuck did?” Axel demanded. He didn’twantto believe him, but now that he was thinking about it, Bishop had looked pretty fucking confused when that recording started playing over the speakers.
“Take a guess,” Bishop said in a bitter tone.
A split second was all it took.Marissa.
Of fucking course it was Marissa.
He’d deal with her later, but for the moment, he had two irate queens looking at him like he’d just…
Well, pretty much like he’d just impregnated the future Empress before her coronation, so fair enough.
“Is it true?” Emily asked, looking back at her son. “Is Ella pregnant?”
She didn’t sound half as scandalized as she should have been, considering the fact that she’d told Axel and his siblings that they’d be disowned if they made her a grandmother “before her time.”
Axel hesitated. He never had to worry about choosing his words on his own behalf, but they had an audience and Ella was already upset enough.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he muttered, shoving hard into Bishop on his way past. “I need to find Ella.”
“I’m coming with you,” Bishop said, falling into step.
Axel glared over his shoulder. “You think you can manage to be less of an asshole, or am I going to have to rearrange your smug-ass face before you apologize?”
“Apologize?” he echoed in disbelief. “I’m not the one who lied.”
“She didn’t lie, she just didn’t tell you,” Axel said, stalking down the hall. He didn’t know where Ella had gone, but his first guess was the garden. “And after tonight, I see why.”
Bishop’s gaze turned furious. “And yet she felt she could confide inyou.”
He didn’t need to be specific for Axel to know what he was getting at, and he wasn’t wrong. He was far from the stable, committed type. At least, he had been. He wasn’t sure who the fuck he was half the time anymore, but the fact that his old nature had done a one-eighty mattered less than it should have. She mattered more, and when he was with her, he knew exactly who and what he was.Hers.
Her protector, her mate, the father of her child. Whatever and whomever she needed him to be, he’d be it, because she wasallthat mattered, and as much as he hated the idea of sharing her with anyone, let alone Bishop, he was hers, too. If Axel had to beat the shit out of him to get him to realize it, so be it.
“That should tell you how badly you fucked up,” Axel quipped, blowing through the doors that led into the garden. He looked around and sniffed the air, but he couldn’t catch her scent. It was pretty windy, but she couldn’t have gotten far.
“She’s not out here,” Bishop said after they’d thoroughly searched the garden.
“You don’t know that. She’s probably in her cat form,” Axel muttered, scanning the treeline. She was a fast little fucker, so if shehadshifted, she could be anywhere. “She always goes into it when she’s stressed.”
She always had, too. He remembered the week she’d first arrived and spent most of her time as a small black cat huddled behind the sofa, before Emily had started punishing her.
Strange that he’d forgotten that.
The silence made Axel turn around to see if Bishop had gone off. Instead, he found the other male standing there with a pensive look on his face.
“Listen, if you’re gonna cry, go back inside to your mommy,” he taunted.
Bishop’s eyes narrowed but his expression didn’t shift otherwise. “You should have told me.”
Axel cocked his head. “In case you haven’t noticed, Puss ‘n Boots, I hate your guts and I owe you jack shit.”
“You know what she is,” Bishop said, taking a step toward him.
It took Axel a second, but he frowned when he finally realized what Bishop was talking about. “You mean a feral. Were you not there when we all agreed not to talk about that shit?”
“You think you understand, but you don’t,” Bishop pressed. “Not the half of it.”
